Festivals

More than “Tutti Frutti. ” More than flamboyance.

Little did attendees of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival realize that events that were happening at the exact same time down in Orange County, California, would be recreated later for the audiences of the 2023 edition. In January of 2016, Long Hoang Ma, a 74-year-old Vietnamese cab driver, reluctantly picked up a late-night call for passengers.

The Tromsø Film Festival, in northern Norway, ran from January 16th to the 21st. It celebrated its 33rd edition and exhibited approximately 160 films, with 90 of them showing in the main program.

The rise of social media has created the opportunity for people to connect with those who might have suffered trauma similar to their own.   In parallel, it has also helped provide a vocally receptive audience to a trend in the nonfiction film space — a broader reexamination of the past treatment, both by the media and society at large, of female public figures, especially actresses, singers, and other celebrities.

Everything about Bethann Hardison is distinctly unique: her upbringing, her look, her wide-ranging career from model to agent to activist, and even how she brought Invisible Beauty, the film about herself, to fruition. It is not that common that the subject of a documentary also serves as its co-director (along with Frédéric Tcheng who previously made Halston and Dior and I).

Icelandic writer-director and actor Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir presented her feature film debut, Band (through Compass Films), at the Tromsø Film Festival, as part of the Films from the North series, presenting films from across the Arctic areas. A hybrid documentary/mockumentary, Band is a portrayal of an all-female band, comprised of three women just shy of turning 40, told through the lens of Örnólfsdóttir, and based on the real experiences of her band, The Post Performance Blues Band.

Season two of the Showtime series Your Honor, starring Golden Globe winner  Bryan Cranston, has just begun. Based on the Israeli series Kvodo, the story centers on a respected judge whose son is involved in a hit-and-run accident, leading to difficult choices and terrible consequences as he attempts to keep the crime a secret The show returns to follow ex-judge Michael Desiato (Cranston), now a man forced to face the wreckage of his former life.

“I am so happy that a giant streaming studio is backing us up and more people will be able to see this worldwide,” exclaimed Filipino filmmaker Kenneth Dagatan whose horror film, In My Mother’s Skin, was just acquired by the global video streaming service Prime Video. The horror fairytale, which was written and directed by Dagatan, had its world premiere at the Midnight Section of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Since 1978, rising talent and hidden movie gems have been put in the limelight and given an international stage in Park City, Utah, thanks to living legend Robert Redford, who created this jewel of a film festival. On January 21st, 2023, Flemish movie star Veerle Baetens’ directorial debut film, titled When It Melts, held its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

Barely three years ago, her first fiction feature film, Yo, Impossible, was selected by Venezuela to compete for the Oscar for the best international feature. This week, Patricia Ortega will present her next film at the Sundance Film Festival, Mamacruz, a Spanish production.